The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

1.

Abigail tensed when her Enemy walked into the office, but she was able to make herself stand and step around the desk to face her. Her staff knew to let the Enemy in, without understanding why. Abigail had trained her staff to do anything she told them to, and dread failure.

Just now Abigail couldn’t remember doing that. Telling anyone to do anything.

The dwindling part of Abigail’s mind that could still think and decide told her this woman was Alyssa Pierce but the name, like most of what had been Abigail’s life, was like work sounds from the building around them, traffic outside—dim and meaningless. Overshadowed by something—Someone—more important.

The newer, stronger part of Abigail’s mind, the one that spasmed and obeyed, told her only that Someone had set her Enemy over her, and it was sweet.

The Enemy closed the door behind her and smiled as Abigail approached.

Abigail stopped and looked at her. Abigail’s ass clenched delightfully and she closed her eyes, hearing the Enemy just breathe and wait for her to open them.

“She knows you haven’t obeyed Her,” the Enemy said, when she captured Abigail’s gaze again.

Abigail whimpered once.

“There is time to do it, Abigail. It’s all right. Soon you will obey.”

Trembling, Abigail faced her. She could remember clashing with the Enemy, mercilessly ripping her witnesses apart in cross-examination, discrediting her office in the press, nearly getting one of her subordinates disbarred as a proxy shot—and it was all beautifully irrelevant. It meant as little now as her dignity.

It had all been before, with the rest of Abigail’s life. Like any of Her slaves, Abigail no longer owned her life.

Knowing She would send the Enemy to activate her had filled Abigail with dread, and trapped her on her bed last night with her fingers whirring between her thighs until they ached. She wanted to drop to her knees, but this wasn’t the time.

What She asked of Abigail was simple, really, and like all the rest of them Abigail had dreamed of being able to serve. But to do this . . .

“Soon I will obey!” she proclaimed. The Enemy smiled and nodded, but let her stand there. Abigail’s need, the need She had placed in Abigail, pulsed and slid inside her. The pain was sweet, just like the love She gave.

“It’s so hard to obey.” Her whisper was shaky. Even as the Enemy nodded again, understanding perfectly, her eyes shone with relish at Abigail’s tension. That, too, had nothing to do with the old rivalry. The Enemy belonged to Her even more tha Abigail did.

Abigail swallowed. The pain grew bitter. “This . . . is . . . against everything I’ve believed in. It—” She looked desperately at the Enemy, who’d slave-trained Abigail at Her command, turning her into a nearly robotic servitor for one endless morning—there was no one else here. “I can’t—but I have to.”

She knew the picture was there, behind her on the wall. She didn’t look. “My father brought me up to . . .” She swallowed again. Her father was dead and would never see her crawl at the Enemy’s heels or at Hers. He’d never see his daughter mewing for another lick, mesmerized by the smooth ass above her.

Soon, she’d be able to wish he could.

Her mind slid sideways. “You know,” she whispered, “I could do this so easily if I were before Her! Under Her eyes, while She laughed.” Abigail pictured herself at the Residence, kneeling in the silvery bikini of Her household.

“Yes, Abigail. Any of us could. But the test is when we do Her will alone. For Her, with Her power inside us.” The Enemy looked past Abigail at the picture of Abigail’s father. “He was so proud when you took the oath, back then.

“Now, you’re pledged to Her. To love Her, and to obey Her always. Not ‘at all costs’ . . .”

“There are no costs in obedience to Her Whom I worship,” Abigail picked up the lesson burned into her brain. “There are only rewards that cry out.”

The Enemy looked at Abigail, openly admiring the way she looked in the clothes she’d bought under the Enemy’s direction. “Perhaps your father can see you, Abigail. Perhaps he watched you beg Her to make you Her slave. Perhaps he’s seen how much dirtier your dreams are lately.” She stopped and listened to Abigail pant.

“Imagine what his cries sound like as he watches you.”

The wrenching inside Abigail hurt her and it hardened her nipples and clitoris. “Imagine,” the Enemy said softly, “what they’d sound like against your cunt.”

Abigail almost screamed but she contained herself, because she was breaking through to what mattered. “I . . . must . . . obey,” she breathed.

For Her. Abigail lived and breathed and worked and lied and spoke and whored, just to please Her. The more it hurt to obey, the better it felt to obey.

Abigail loved Her. How could she not want—?

“Help me. Please help me.”

The Enemy walked up to her and cupped her cheek, then her breast.

“That, little one, is what our Mistress sent me here to do.”

Then she turned Abigail, grabbed her ass, and propelled her gently back to the desk, sitting Abigail in her chair and slipping up onto the desk to sit in front of Abigail, smiling down on her. As Abigail looked back up at the Enemy, it crossed her mind that she was a high-ranking figure, someone who’d worked and excelled to earn a job where she kept her desk uncluttered. Clear enough so a beautiful woman could sit comfortably on the smooth wood and leather.

She looked up, thinking yet again that her tongue knew the Enemy ‘s asshole better than it did her mouth, loving the knowledge a bit more, as she’d been taught.

The Enemy raised her legs and rested her feet on the arms of Abigail’s desk chair, and then gracefully lifted her skirt, cocking an eyebrow until the warm, sharp scent snared Abigail’s mind and drew her eyes downward. The Enemy’s smooth pussy gleamed wetly and seemed almost to smile at Abigail. Entranced, she was surprised when the Enemy’s fingertips pushed her head toward it.

“Bend now, Abigail. Take my scent.” Her head spun as she yielded to the pressure, bending and obeying, sliding her face between the cool smoothness of the opened thighs to the slick fire between them. The Enemy made a low sound and her thighs squeezed, and in the closeness and the rich smell Abigail moaned helplessly.

It tensed the Enemy further but she kept silent and Abigail only breathed, though she yearned for a command to lick and adore. She felt the pleasant scratch of the stocking tops under her jaw.

“I worshipped Her,” the Enemy said raggedly. She could barely keep talking, but like any of them her obedience was stronger than her arousal. “Just now, before She sent me to you. She wanted me wet for you. She gave me what you’re smelling, Abigail, when I knelt for Her.”

Abigail’s eyes blurred, and the gleam of the juiced pussy, shadowed by her head, turned to jewels. She sobbed into the Enemy’s crotch and felt it pulse through the other woman, and then the hand on her head eased her back.

When she looked up, Abigail was smiling proudly.

“Yes.” Her voice was steady, firm, convinced. “I know Her commands and I will obey them. I will not resist.” Her hand strayed to her skirt, and when the Enemy nodded, her own face flushed, Abigail found her own pussy and touched it lightly.

She paused. “I’m very sorry I wasn’t already obedient.” She was too focused and too thrilled at what she was about to do for Her, to fall into deep remorse, but she had to acknowledge it.

The Enemy’s deep smile made her puzzled and hopeful. As Abigail rose, the Enemy let her legs down and slipped off the desk, so they slid to stand against each other. It kept the Enemy’s skirt up, and left her bare groin warm against Abigail’s skirt, with nothing else between their pussies.

They held each other, and the Enemy stared into her eyes long enough that it started to hypnotize Abigail. The Enemy let her enjoy that before saying, “You’re as obedient as She wills you to be, Abby. She knows that for each of us, certain kinds of submission deepen us more, if they happen when we still have a little more freedom to give up.”

Abigail tightened against her. Mistress cared that much about giving her chances to obey.

Abigail loved Her.

“After you’ve obeyed Her, Abby—well, it’s Monday, but a day or two can pass quickly in a slave’s dream. When I leave here, you’ll remember your plans for a midweek getaway.”

In her arms, Abigail went rigid, knowing what the Enemy meant now. At the Residence, two days could be an eternity under Her brainwashing, and after that she’d be owned completely.

Mistress was giving her the honor of obeying Her now, on her own.

She looked into her Enemy’s eyes, knowing her Enemy had already been initiated that way and wondering whether she remembered what it felt like.

“We’re so lucky,” she said, and kissed the other slave long and deeply before they pulled apart.

The Enemy had rearranged her skirt and was still reaching for the door when Abigail was at her computer, tapping out the first of the tasking e-mails. Her staff knew only that they served her, but they’d be carrying out the will of the One Who owned her just the same. They’d know something odd was going on, but it wouldn’t matter.

She typed, hearing the door close but too deeply under Her control to turn and glance. It would be wonderful if her staff did know, if Abigail could strut before them in nothing but Her scanty metallic livery, telling them Whom they really served. Staring them down, letting her eyes linger on the pretty ones Mistress might enjoy—as toys for a night, or as slavegirls for the rest of their lives.

Whatever She chose.

Abigail wasn’t even aware of how she squirmed around her sodden panties. She was too focused on obedience, and she knew that the real rush was yet to come—when she realized she’d gone too far, and betrayed herself for the One she loved above all things.

She was dazedly grateful that her morality hadn’t been extinguished, yet.

It was so hot to do something so wrong for Her, and still be able to know it was wrong.

Oh, God! Daddy! I need to—

She had to stop typing for a moment. But only for a moment.

2.

Staring into space, describing how she’d seen her boss go under, Eve looked as though she herself had just been hypnotized. She was oblivious to the happy hour crowd at Endgames swirling around them.

But as Serena watched her, she knew Eve’s trance was about dread, not fascination.

“She looked so—odd. I almost didn’t recognize her. Hard to describe. Partly like she was ready to fall asleep right where she sat, but partly just enthralled, wrapped up in the woman with her. Almost . . . dopey.”

Serena thought about Abigail Warrinder, Esq., and the menace she usually radiated, and couldn’t picture it.

“I wondered if she were on something—not that I think she’d ever take drugs, but I just couldn’t account for it. She was at one of those stand-up tables in the deli, downstairs in our building—there were people around but no one really paying attention.” Eve was still staring and missed Serena’s helpful nod.

“But when I recognized Alyssa Pierce with her . . . she and Abigail can’t stand each other. Abigail used to call her ‘the Enemy’ before we got e-mail and there might be a record. It’s not just professional, DA and defender—they really don’t get along.

“But they were sitting there . . . I was afraid to go over, and I still don’t know if I wish I had or not.

“They looked—” Eve swallowed. “They looked like they were on a date. Like lovers.”

Serena saw her hesitate, and said, as neutrally as she could, “Could they be?”

Eve looked sharply at her, but her face wasn’t angry. “I almost wish they were.” She swallowed again, and Serena saw how tightly she was holding herself together. “I’d even rather it were just about some sleazy bribe. Abigail—”

“Did you see Pierce do anything to her while they spoke?”

“Like swing a pocketwatch in front of her eyes?” Eve closed her mouth, as the sarcasm collapsed. She shook her head. “No. Nothing like that.”

“If you saw them already talking,” Serena said quietly, trying to encourage her, “whatever happened might have been done already. Maybe it was a spoken trigger. Even with the little I know of Ms Warrinder, I can’t see anyone being able to subdue her that quickly.”

Eve looked down at her hands. “Not unless they’d already done something to her, you mean. Conditioned her. Broken her—” She clamped her jaws and Serena kept very still.

“I think I believe you, Eve.” Serena didn’t look away until she saw Eve’s shoulders lift, just a bit, and then glanced at her in the mirror behind the bar. She let Eve have those seconds of encouragement, as good a way as any to break up the body language of their conversation in case anyone was watching.

Their eyes met in the mirror, and she saw Eve sit straighter. It made Serena like her more.

“But?” Eve’s soft voice was nearly of a pitch with the just-too-loud music on the sound system, but Serena read her lips.

“But—mind control is a serious accusation. Saying it about a public figure like her is more so.”

Eve nodded, and regarded her wine, taking an abstracted sip. Serena left her lime and soda alone. She thought about the young lawyer sitting next to her, the breathless phone call and the determination to meet here.

Serena had tried talking her out of that, hoping the phone line was making her sound like a grizzled beat reporter who’d been around the block, instead of a freelance feature writer still exploring the front lobby. Eve had bought the persona but not the argument, and while Serena didn’t like meeting out where everyone could see them near each other, Eve had a rationale: she always came to Endgames after work on Tuesday, and this was no time to do something strange.

Eve looked down at her wine again. “You’re thinking I should tell the police, someone else in authority. But if she did do what I think she did, it’s more likely someone in the DA’s office or the police that made her do it. Or arranged it.”

“Damn your Vulcan logic,” Serena muttered, and admired the grin that climbed around Eve’s mouth for a moment. She watched Eve let it grow into a broad, attractive smile, and her admiration for Eve’s skill—and poise under this kind of stress—went further. If anyone was watching them, they saw a couple of women trading jokes after work. Maybe a lawyer keeping an inquisitive scribbler humored but uninformed. Not discussing anything serious, like a mind-controlled senior partner.

Serena shared the smile and tried to forget her own fear. She thought about someone in the police who’d decided the way to stop a brilliant, frustratingly competent defense counsel was to zap her brain. It didn’t have to be like 1984. It could be as unofficial as a traffic stop, a stungun, and a convenient ambulance on a side street, and Abigail Warrinder might never know what hit her. If she even woke up in the conversion chair, she’d be told to forget it. After she was programmed to do everything they told her.

“No,” Eve said. “It was tempting, but I won’t call them. I told you, instead. You’re a good reporter and I think you’re honest.

“You’re not really well-known. No offense.”

“None taken.” Serena was rueful, but it was true.

“So it would be a little less risky.”

Maybe. Maybe not. Serena thought about this being the story that did get her noticed. She might not be brilliant or even frustratingly competent, but the people who’d neutered Warrinder’s mind might not flinch at enslaving an uppity reporter, either.

“Call me old-fashioned. I still think the press can save us once in a while.” Eve let the smile freeze and she was half-tranced again. “God. I wish I could believe it was something else.”

She looked up. “The thing is, when I got back to the office, Abigail was there. Alyssa had been and gone, they said—closed-door meeting. Abigail looked fine when she came out. Perfectly all right, normal as anything. Went off to the afternoon meeting with the managing partners.”

“Friendly little snarl in place?” Serena asked, and Eve gave her the flicker of a grin.

“More or less. I was even starting to think she was playing some kind of mindgame on Alyssa.”

Eve took a deep breath. “Then, next day, there was this leak about Fischer. It’s blown his defense wide open. Before that, Abigail’d basically wiped out the prosecution’s case against him. But now the motions to suppress are worthless.

“Now we’re basically fucked.”

Serena looked at Eve, trying to read her as she said that. “Fischer helped his wife wash too many tranquilizers down with too much scotch and then helped her try to swim it off in their indoor pool. I know you’re not officially supposed to notice that—”

“I thought reporters were supposed to be objective,” Eve whispered. “Never mind. As ‘deep background’ I agree with you. If—well, when—this reaches a jury not even Abigail will be able to keep that needle out of his arm.

“He actually told us the things he used to do to her, why that poor woman felt she had to take the pills. He seemed a little pissed off there was such a big deal about it.”

Eve took a drink then, mostly to tamp down her anger.

“Serena, what Abigail has been teaching me, what she believes, was how sacred due process is. Her father was a judge and he taught her, and she really believes it.

“Everyone—everyone gets a trial.” Serena heard the belief. Judge Warrinder’s daughter had won a convert to his code, and she sensed he’d be pleased. “That’s the only way we can feel halfway safe that the guilty ones really are guilty.

“It isn’t about a cockroach like Fischer. Or about the retainer he has with the firm, whatever they say about that. Back when she was just starting out in the law, Abigail went to jail for contempt because she—never mind the details now. She was a public defender then and nothing mattered but the client.

“I won’t believe she’d turn on that. Not unless someone got into her head and changed it.”

3.

Serena left Endgames first, resisting the urge to look behind her, and drove home. She wished it was daytime and she could run this past her favorite editor. She knew Lori Kassel’s home number, but she also knew how little Lori liked to be called there, even by her, so she just left a message on Lori’s office voicemail and tried to sleep on it all.

She already knew someone she could call. Valerie Joplin knew about mind control in flesh-crawling detail, not from her own experience but from the victims she’d made her quiet crusade.

Sighing, Serena put the idea aside. Valerie could be of immense help, and she never said no, but Serena vowed to wait until she had some specific things to ask, that would be worth some limited loan of her time.

Valerie had been one of the few people who’d ever argued her out of doing a story. Serena had been developing a human-interest piece on some recently-freed brothel slaves, when everyone else was doing straight criminal reporting, or else playing the tabloid sex angle. Valerie was trying to organize treatment for the women against a tide of investigators who hoped the residual brainwashing would make them more cooperative witnesses—better at remembering, and unable to withhold anything they did know. One of the detectives actually said as much on the record, and claimed she saw nothing wrong with that.

Valerie got Serena to see that these women were still trying to get used to identity again, and that they needed to do it quietly, in privacy. Valerie was worried about suicide attempts and dissociation. Human interest was beyond them—they’d only been experiencing interest from humans that wanted to hurt them, and had been deeply trained to know no other kind.

It hadn’t so much been Valerie’s words or even her exhaustion as she spoke them, talking to Serena after two sleepless days trying to get the women treatment now and not weeks from now. But Valerie had her own inadvertent window into the nightmare, and a talent for letting others peek through it, and Serena walked away from the story without feeling she’d lost anything.

Months later, she’d gotten an unsigned card that just said Thank you. It was in an envelope from the clinic where Valerie had gotten the survivors placed. She’d called Valerie and told her, and they’d gone out and gotten drunk. They never knew which of the women had sent it. They agreed never to ask.

After that, she made sure that whenever she talked to Valerie, she just listened without taking notes. She even helped divert a larger media outlet from shining its lights on Valerie’s little kitchen-table operation. She’d done it by trying to conceal what she knew about a flashier corporately-funded halfway house that really wanted the attention, and the other journalists had charged in, gloating at foiling her inept shot at hogging the story.

Valerie had hugged her when she described it, but it had been better to watch her laugh that hard.

No. She’d wait a while before dumping any of this on Valerie. She went to bed.

Next morning, she was amazed she hadn’t dreamt of it at all, and as she answered the phone to make an appointment with Lori’s secretary she wondered if that meant anything.

At the Herald, Lori heard her out without saying a word, and she wondered if this were getting diluted as it went from person to person. Lori turned to the wall with the sunset painting, to consider it.

Serena looked at her. Just as she and Eve were about the same age, so were Lori and Abigail Warrinder. She looked up to Lori the way Eve did to Abigail. She’d joked with Lori about whether Lori was her mentor, or if they should say mentrix, and if that required Lori to wear thigh-high boots . . .

But—god, what would she do, if she thought someone had tampered with Lori’s mind? Would she be more angry than scared? As brave as Eve was, willing to try to help?

Still looking at the painting, Lori asked, “Are you frightened, Serena?”

Serena started. “Yes. Yes, Lori. More each time I think of it.”

“You should be,” Lori said, turning back to her and smiling thinly. “And maybe that’s a good thing. People who aren’t scared of mind control are probably under it.

“You told your source you believed her. Do you?”

Serena nodded.

“Hmm. Well . . . for now, for reasons like hers, so do I. And I haven’t spent all this time telling you to trust your instincts so I could turn around and disregard them. I have some other information about Abigail Warrinder that makes this more believable.” She didn’t offer to share it and Serena didn’t ask. Lori might well be guarding her own source as carefully as Serena meant to protect Eve.

“But part of what I get paid to do is vet stories. I’m not saying it’s too good to be true, but someone could be trying to smear Warrinder. Or even trap us.” Serena started to reach for the folder she’d put on the desk. “I’m sure a lot of what you’ll be doing first will be to look for that possibility, too.”

“It’s my credibility on the line, too, Lori.”

“You have a lot of credibility to put there, Serena.” Lori smiled more warmly. “You’re the only freelancer whose work I don’t have to clear with the rest of the board.”

Serena gulped but hid it, and just nodded. Lori looked even more pleased with her.

“I still do, of course, just to make them feel better.

“But this time, there’s something you can do to reassure them. Well, us.” She took a notecard and scratched out an address.

“This is a psychiatrist. I doubt she’d be on your list of sources for mind control expertise, because she’s stayed away from media. But Dr Calvert’s word is gold for some people here, and she does know a lot from the technical side—if you get details on how Warrinder’s acting or clues about when her conditioning might have happened, she may be able to tell you what it could mean.

“Or recognize a pattern that means something else entirely.”

“You mean—that Warrinder’s—actually the real brainwasher?” Serena mimed horrified amazement.

It was ignored. Lori, being Lori, had already seen a darker possibility. “I mean like Warrinder’s building an alibi for something else she wants to do and get away with.” She blinked. “Seems unoriginal, after she got that heiress acquitted.”

That had been a year ago. Serena remembered the girl—her personal trainer had gradually drugged her into having an affair with him. Then into believing she was a zombie. Then, as his will-less zombie, into poisoning her mother.

“But it still would have shown her how to make a defense like that work. Regardless of its truth.”

Serena thought about Eve spending so much devotion on someone so cold-blooded. It was sad, but not impossible.

“Your Dr Calvert could suss out something like that?”

Lori shrugged. “Probably. On the other hand, if Counselor Warrinder’s smart enough to fool even her, then we can all be glad she’s only faking MC.”

“Faking it’s hard, Lori, unless you’re just trying to get on TV. They put that woman, the heiress, through the ringer—Warrinder’s shrinks and the Commonwealth’s, both—to see whether the drugs really were controlling her. And that left a lot of traces. The bastard never expected her to face anyone but his own pet doctor. She’s still in a hospital somewhere.” Where, Serena remembered Eve telling her, Abigail Warrinder still visited her, well out of the spotlight, every couple of weeks.

“If Warrinder were doing that,” she went on, “she’d need to get in touch with experts, either to buy their diagnosis or get help in feigning it, even if it’s purely psychological.”

“Which,” Lori batted it back, “could of course also be what real brainwashers programmed her to do, helplessly staying in touch with their minions, to keep her reinforced and obedient.”

She looked at Serena. “This will be a mess, whatever it turns out to be. See Dr Calvert first, anyway.”

4.

Abigail’s staff stayed wide of her when she returned from the press conference. No one had fixed blame and, from the reporters’ questions, it wasn’t even clear where outsiders thought the leak was. But everyone here at the firm was afraid—of where false but plausible trails might lead, of what then-minor role they’d had in handling Fischer’s compromised information. Or just about whom Abigail might sacrifice to her own rage, for losing this case with a whimper instead of winning it with a bang.

Her old habit, and her Owner’s new conditioning, let her hide the smile. All that worry, and they were all wholly innocent. She was the traitor.

“Abby?” It was Eve at her door before she could close it, first-naming her softly. It wasn’t necessary to whisper, with everyone finding things to do as far from earshot as they could.

“What?”

“What can we do now?” It didn’t sound like despair. Her associate phrased it like a request for battle orders, even though there was a desperate tone in it. “I’ve been researching. I think we may be able to tie some of it closely enough to the cops’ investigation that we could get it thrown out again.”

She looked at Eve and felt a stab of pleasureless hurt. Even before submitting to Mistress and Her sapphic preference, Abigail had sensed the younger attorney was half in love with her, even if she didn’t realize that. It wasn’t even necessarily sexual, though she felt sure that if she’d beckoned Eve to join her in the gym shower, or in her bed, the girl would find herself liking it.

She could do that, now. Mistress hadn’t used her to seduce a new slave into Her service, but she’d seen how it was done. But Mistress had given her no commands to obey regarding Eve.

Eve really loved her, as a heroine or a role model or an elder sister. If Eve slept with her, it might even blossom into lust, but it would be Eve’s heart, not her pussy, that would have led her to Abigail’s bed.

There was nothing, then, but the shame of feeling Eve’s admiration. The Abigail who’d won that regard had slid on her belly across cool tiles to beg for a chance to lick, and had never risen again.

Eve blinked and Abigail realized they’d just been staring at each other. If I were allowed to hypnotize her . . . But she wasn’t.

“When you have something together,” she told Eve gently, “send it to me. I really think this is it, and we’d need to block all the material. But thank you for trying. I need to pause, for a bit.”

“I’ll do that,” Eve said, and smiled encouragingly. Abigail held her breath and searched her protegee’s eyes for hero-worship, something to make her betrayal feel worse. Instead she realized Eve knew they were screwed, and that Abigail couldn’t save it, but she was keeping faith just the same. If Abigail were going down with her ship, Eve was lashing herself to the helm beside her.

Unable to speak, she nodded and let Eve shut the door.

Abigail went to her desk, shaking off the regret. Away from the soft reproach of Eve’s eyes she could remember the Enemy’s burning into hers. She felt the smile force her mouth wider. If Eve had seen her in here before, eating out Alyssa Pierce and loving the sharp taste of her own abasement—ohh. If Eve could have seen her being trained, the things Alyssa made her do before Mistress and Her other slaves, both of them naked but Alyssa so utterly in command of her . . .

But if Eve had been there to see that, she’d have been one of them, lost in Mistress’ trance. She’d more likely be kissing Her feet, or holding Her drink, than watching Abigail learn the best way to rim a woman. Eve would be under Her spell.

Abigail reached under her skirt, forgetting guilt.

Tracing the leaks would be impossible. Mistress had selected the information Herself from what Abigail offered Her and had it slipped out through channels She knew. Abigail’s own secretary had been dutifully copying everything she had, and then just as dutifully lapsing into trance and recopying it, passing the extra copies to an equally-entranced courier Abigail didn’t know.

She thought about Jordan. Her secretary wasn’t like her, one of the harem. Jordan was just a dronegirl she’d given to Mistress at Her command. Other slaves of Hers had taken Jordan, and Abigail had just told the office the next morning that Jordan would be off sick for the next couple of days, without wondering why those words were in her head or remembering when someone had put them there. When Jordan returned she had cute-doctor gossip for the others, a convincing bottle of medication, and no memory at all of being abducted and taken to Mistress to be brainwashed.

The first and only time Abigail had called her in and triggered her, Jordan had snapped straight like a puppet whose strings had been yanked. She’d repeated the initial instructions in a monotone and then walked out, and she’d carried on her programmed copying without knowing it since then. Jordan was automated, and obeyed without needing to be commanded.

Jordan walked in now with the disk, the light going out of her eyes as the trance instructions took hold. The sight of Abigail’s office in the afternoon finished triggering her. Abigail stood back to let her hypnotically-activated secretary sit primly at the workstation and complete the download.

Abigail sat at her desk and started to masturbate, watching the girl mindlessly obey. She didn’t know how deeply Mistress had brainwashed Jordan, or what else Jordan had been conditioned to do. Perhaps She had prepared Jordan to confess to the leak later, if She decided it should be blamed on Abigail’s office though not on Abigail herself.

Mistress cherished Her harem, but dronegirls like Jordan were expendable. They existed only to be used. Abigail envied Jordan that possibility. She wished Mistress did, after all, want her to sacrifice herself. It would be nothing like atonement—there was nothing to atone for in obeying Her will. To stand naked in Her collar on the courthouse steps under TV lights, telling the world how much of a slave she was . . .

Jordan ejected the disk and turned, gazing unseeingly at Abigail until she was near the door. Then she closed her eyes and awakened from the first of her daily trances. Whatever her programming made her remember of these periods swam into place behind her eyes as life returned to them.

“Will there be anything else, Ms Warrinder?”

Your tongue in my cunt for an hour, Abigail would have said, if either one had been hers to direct.

“No, Jordan. Continue with your tasks.”

They smiled and Jordan went out, to sleep again with her eyes open when she saw her computer screen, then mindlessly transfer the files. She’d slip into hypnosis once more on her way home, when she gave the data to the other dronegirl who met her and received the next disk she was to fill.

Abigail didn’t really envy them their robotic obedience. One of the pleasures Mistress freely let Her slaves have was awareness that they served Her, something no dronegirl had the mind to know. Abigail shivered in her chair over what she’d done today, and hoped that when she crawled to Mistress later, She would be pleased at what Abigail had surrendered to Her.

Soon she would be brainwashed completely. She would be like Alyssa, who’d be Enemy no more but just a fellow puppet, another extension of Her will. She might not even be able to remember disobedience, then. Alyssa had been right. Obeying Her counted more, now, and Abigail had made herself more of a slave than any mindwiped secretary.

She said nothing as she turned to look her father’s picture in the eye, but her smile deepened and her fingers moved faster as they grew slick.

5.

Dr Calvert’s receptionist was a coolly pretty, brisk-mannered blonde who took Serena’s hand firmly and named herself Michaela. She’d taken Serena’s phone messages suggesting they talk beforehand, but the doctor hadn’t returned them. It left Serena a bit adrift, since she usually preferred to scout out the interviewee by phone first.

“I understand you’re not here as a patient,” Michaela said now. “It’s just easier to make standard appointments for her. Otherwise her schedule just goes completely out of control.”

“Thank you.” Serena had done a couple of stories that had required what she’d somewhat ambitiously called “undercover” work on her resume, but a visit to a shrink might be hard to explain later. Especially since she wasn’t paying.

She heard footsteps, and then a woman walked in.

Serena looked at her and registered dark smooth skin, sculpted features, a tailored ecru suit moving over a graceful frame, eyes that were a strange but lovely light shade.

It felt like being hit in the chest with surpassing gentleness.

She’d heard of personal magnetism but never felt it before. Not like this. She thought of every atom in her body reorienting to point her toward this woman. It was more intense and less frightening than any celebrity she’d ever interviewed.

“Dr Calvert.” She didn’t even mind the hitch in her voice. In a way, it was tribute she was glad to render. Which was an embarrassing damned way to feel, but it warmed her.

Dr Calvert smiled, and it was like a blessing. She sensed Serena’s reaction—and admired her for keeping her head despite it. Winning Dr Calvert’s admiration felt . . .

She was aware of Michaela watching her, but not very much.

“May I call you Serena? Hello.” The psychiatrist’s hands were warm and strong. Her voice was low.

“Lori spoke very highly of you, and I don’t doubt her judgment a bit.”

“Hello,” she whispered, gazing into the strange eyes, melting into the gently powerful handshake. “Dr Calvert . . .”

I’m making a complete idiot of myself.

“It says nothing about you,” Dr Calvert said softly, and kept Serena steady.

She struggled to say something, conscious that as the silence went on she was just standing and staring into those brandy-hued eyes like a—oh god, like a lovestruck teenager.

She’s a woman. So am I. This is not happening.

Michaela was turned the other way, scrolling down a computer screen. Serena used her disregard like a life preserver and pulled herself in.

“Sorry.” She swallowed, made her lips work, projected. “I guess I autosuggested myself into this. Lori said you were an expert in mind control, and I suppose I expected you’d be using some.” It wasn’t really what she wanted to say but at least she was talking, not adoring.

Dr Calvert’s eyes crinkled as she smiled. “Lori reacted a little differently when we met for the first time. Please.” She lifted her hand toward her office, and mercifully did not rest the other one on Serena’s back as she passed.

After the door closed behind them, she gestured to a sectional away from her desk. “Lori took it differently.

“She had her hand on the gun she’d brought.”

Serena let her eyebrows rise.

“Yes. She was researching MC, too, as you are. But she thought I was the practitioner.” Dr Calvert shivered a little at the memory. “Really, it’s such a cliche it could be true—the evil hypnotherapist turning her patients into sex-slaves and tools. Then, there’s this”—she waved her hands slightly—“charisma I seem to have.”

She smiled, and Serena was disarmed by seeing it from Dr Calvert’s side. Like her fashion-model looks, her magnetism could intimidate even as it attracted.

“Worst of all, perhaps, was that I’d made the mistake of not having any malpractice complaints on file, or disgruntled ex-patients, or even angry staff. Everyone spoke well of me.”

She arched an eyebrow. “All ‘a little too perfect,’ I guess.”

“I hope they blinked a few times while they praised you,” Serena said, and they laughed. She already glowed with how much more in control she felt. “Before mind control started to be so common, that wouldn’t have seemed so odd.”

Dr Calvert put her hands on top of a chairback. “I know. I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t see mind control abuse in my own practice, and I wasn’t really looking outside it to see the trend.

“My patients aren’t the sort, either, who pay attention to tabloid tales of mind-molded sex slaves. No one was asking me about what sort of hypnosis-proof sunglasses to buy, anyway.”

She looked over at Serena. “Then came Lori, who’d been looking at it a lot. So there was this very smart, very worried woman sitting in my office who’d put together a lot of very convincing facts, with a logic I hadn’t even thought of, and considered me more dangerous than a mob chief.”

“With a gun,” Serena said, trying to picture Lori that scared. Then she thought of Eve, and marveled at knowing people like that. People who didn’t run, but tried to confront the threat that might end up enslaving them.

“With a gun. And who’d locked my office door to prevent Michaela from breaking in on us, in case I’d brainwashed her into my robot bodyguard.

“I tell you, Serena . . . for a while there I did wish I could hypnotize women into obeying me with just my eyes. Lori’s not a woman to take lightly.” She looked away, embarrassed, and Serena realized she’d just tried to look into those eyes again, to see how it felt.

“Lori didn’t tell me about all this.” Serena was finding it possible, now, to picture her mentrix packing heat and sitting here to face down an Evil Hypnotist.

“Hmm.” Dr Calvert smiled. “She was pretty sheepish afterward.

“Fortunately, Lori was wiser than she was worried. No one got shot. But it gave me a real incentive—a heightened interest in helping people separate fact from fantasy about mind control.”

Serena nodded. “She gave me the research list that you’d given her, but I wanted to ask some specific questions.”

“Please,” Dr Calvert said, and settled back, her long legs elegant in repose. Serena could feel her magnetism still there, muted and subtle, like heat from embers.

“Right. Well, I’ve been reading a lot about techniques, and methods. Ones that require isolating the victim, others that supposedly can be done even while people are watching. I can separate out most of the urban legends, but I guess they all assume something I don’t know.”

She sighed. “This will sound dense, but—how does it work? Really? Why do mind-controlled people obey their controllers?”

Dr Calvert smiled warmly. “If I tell you that’s a wise question, Serena, you’ll think I’m patronizing you. But it is.

“There are many methods, for many objectives. Some people just want to paralyze someone’s will so they’ll hand over not only their cards but their PINs, and then forget they were robbed. Others want to create a useful but unwitting slave in place, like the guard who’ll go to sleep when told, so they can enter the store or the dormitory.

“Some are already known—cults and other groups like that, or tyrannical families who want their grown children to keep obeying them. And some MC is old, too. Controlling the information people have, using their fears, isolating them, overloading them with stimuli.”

Dr Calvert sighed. “But a lot of that’s . . . different. There are plenty of media talking heads who’ll harrumph about ‘societal mind control’ but the new types are so much more dangerous. Of those, the most dangerous of all are the ones that convert victims into—” She looked into Serena’s eyes as if judging how she’d react. “—into completely willing slaves.”

Serena looked back at her and nodded.

“Sometimes the victim really is receptive. Not really their fault. Our society values cooperation and hierarchy, and it’s in our genes to respond to certain kinds of authority—part of how the hominids survived to become us. The new methods can reach down to that socially-useful, biologically hardwired facility for obedience, past the defense mechanisms that usually keep us insulated.

“Once they do that,” she said quietly, “they’ve got one of the most frightening powers imaginable.

“They can condition the victim to associate obedience with pleasure, and at that level it just becomes truth. The victim can no longer ask herself ‘Is it right to obey this person?’ because now she knows, deep in her womb, that obedience is what’s right. She can no longer see them as separate. Obeying her controller is what she’s for.”

Serena swallowed. She knew all this, but hearing it so evenly from someone who knew how it could work—who probably had had a nightmare or two about doing it—was getting to her. It was from a different vantage than what Valerie Joplin told her, but just as scary.

“Sometimes the victim is programmed to associate that pleasure drive with personal devotion to something—the controller himself, some figurehead. Maybe an imaginary figure that helps insulate the controller in case the victim’s rescued.”

“Or caught?” Serena thought of Abigail Warrinder’s heiress client.

“Exactly. If someone says they were stealing to obey the hypnotic commands of some cartoon character . . . but the point is that after the control, obedience is the norm. The slave lives to obey. They know they’re enslaved, but they like it.” Her marvelous eyes were unfocused, and Serena looked into their tawny depths for a moment.

“Do you envy them?” she asked, quietly. The eyes came back on and she nearly looked away again.

“Hmm.” The psychiatrist smiled. “I’ve spoken to a few, including some under the influence. It’s scary to see how functional they can be. And I’ve seen addiction, in my residency and even here.” She gestured at the clearly opulent practice. “I know what being enslaved to pleasure can do to someone’s willpower and beliefs when it’s just something inanimate, like a drug.

“To be that way, helpless, and know that someone’s holding that chain around your will, and to have been trained to love them for it—no.

“No, Serena. I don’t envy them. It’s a beautiful trap and once inside most people might not want to be freed.”

Serena considered Abigail Warrinder, whose name and details she couldn’t use here, fighting that kind of addiction, while someone—in the DA’s office?—overwhelmed her with pleasure she couldn’t keep wanting to resist. Blunting her struggle, keeping her tame, drawing her deeper.

“Sometimes controllers use the commands themselves to reinforce control and break a victim.” Dr Calvert might have read her mind.

“Like telling someone to commit a crime, then ‘Look what I can make you do’?”

“Yes. Some might use it as a slippery slope, others for shock value.”

“And there’s sex, too, isn’t there, Doctor?” Serena met her gaze this time. “I’m not trying to play up the sexual aspect for the story, but that’s probably the best pleasure-source a controller can find.”

“Yes, Serena.” Dr Calvert sounded relieved. Serena imagined her annoyance with the “Hypno-Whores Part of Larger Sex Ring” reporting that dominated the media. “Even when the controller has no interest in having sex with the victim. Sometimes that’s scarier—the way some of these people will use something that human and intimate so unintimately, for such inhumane purposes.”

Serena blinked. Another angle entirely—the controllers’ minds, not just those they broke and enslaved. More articles—

But this one wasn’t written yet. She looked down at her list.

“Serena?” She looked back up. The honey-colored eyes peered at her almost shyly.

“Doctor?”

“We’ve been speaking in abstractions so far. I can offer you a safe way to see for yourself how the beginning of such a thing can feel.

“If you’d like to experience it, I’m willing to put you under hypnosis.”

6.

“Um.” Serena pictured herself staring into space while Dr Calvert spoke to her, and the dizziness from their first meeting returned. She did feel safe—it was disorienting how all of the hesitation she’d have had, in any other circumstance, had faded now. With this woman.

“Well—” She found she wanted to, and the uncomfortable thing was that her lovestruck-teen feeling was rising again. She pictured herself asleep and limp under the tawny gaze, hearing nothing but the soft low voice and ready to do anything it commanded her to do.

“I realize,” Dr Calvert said, “that I’ve made hypnosis sound anything but inviting.”

“No. That is, I understand that hypnosis isn’t mind control—”

Dr Calvert shook her head. “I’m not a Jungian, but I know that archetype.”

“It does make me a little nervous,” Serena told her, relieved that she didn’t have to specify why. God—even if she just lay there, she might start babbling about her weird new desire for the doctor.

“But more than that,” she said, suddenly having a brainstorm, “I think I’d be better off for now staying objective. I can try trance later, when I’ve learned more.”

Dr Calvert’s beautiful face was unreadable. Serena couldn’t believe she’d tried to bullshit a psychiatrist, much less succeeded, but what she’d said was valid, and Dr Calvert might be giving her credit for professionalism.

I really am being professional: I’m trying not to end up narrating my own wet dream about her.

“Actually, Serena, I anticipated that. If you’d said yes, I’d have asked you to wait. Partly to let you think it through, and partly—” she glanced at a clock “—because I have a patient coming in.

“But I’d like you to sit in on her session, if you’re comfortable with that. Completely off the record, of course, and only if she consents. But I scheduled you because Perri’s allowed others at her sessions in the past.”

Serena paused. “If something were to come up—”

“She’s not dealing with any demons, Serena. She uses it to help herself focus and do other things.”

“All right.” She laughed a little. “I should see it. I haven’t even seen a stage hypnotist—and yes, I know that’s not the real thing anyway.”

The mock-disapproval looked charming on Dr Calvert, then vanished as she rose to greet Michaela and the pretty young woman Michaela was showing in.

“Perri! How really vibrant you look today.”

Serena looked at her and felt like a slacker. Perri was athletic in the short lycra skirt and tank top, her body sleek and firm, with an even tan that had Serena wondering how very complete it was.

“I always feel fantastic after a session with you, Doctor C, so I’ve gotten used to feeling good beforehand.

“Hi!” She looked brightly at Serena.

“Hi. I’m—”

“Serena’s a writer, Perri.” Serena tried to be irritated at the interruption, but the magnets were on again and she let Dr Calvert take control. Perri just swung her open gaze back, ready to listen to whomever answered. “She’s doing some research that involves hypnosis, and I’ve tentatively invited her to sit in today.

“But only if it’s all right with you.”

Perri smiled broadly at Serena. “I have no secrets I’m worried about. If you’re ready to be bored for a while, I’m cool.” She winked. “As the hypnotized one, I get to sleep through it. Poor you.”

Serena grinned back. She could see Perri playing sports, too graceful to foul often, too damn-it nice to hate for how good she probably was. Perri walked ahead of them back into the large office, walking around curiously, examining various sculptures and books, shifting from leg to tanned leg as if she’d rather be running.

“Perri’s seeing hypnosis from both sides,” Dr Calvert said. “She’s also doing some research with me toward her degree in psychology.”

“A ‘BS’ degree, dontcha know,” Perri smirked. Serena wondered how many people she’d fooled with that cute girl-jock persona. “Talk about goals. But Doctor C keeps trying to get me to defect to pre-med, so I can become a shrink and prescribe all kinds of pharmaceuticals.”

Dr Calvert sighed and smiled. “Just think of a patient trying to be depressed with her around, Serena. Can you?”

Perri flushed under her tan and seemed to try to de-perk. Then her eyes lit again. “But—med school! Please. Bad hours and corpses and ick. Just ick. Residency? Ick. Mental ick is so much less icky than the bodily kind. And more interesting.

“Or maybe Doctor C wants me to become her disciple, and spread her doctrine of total hypnotic obedi—” Perri stopped, seeing their expressions, and made a penitent face. “Oops. Sorry. Mind control not funny.”

She came over to the desk and pointed to a metal and glass contraption on the credenza behind it. “Are we using that again, Doctor?” Looking at Serena, she rolled her eyes. “That thing can put me out like a light. It’s got lights, actually, and it spins and does some other things, too.”

Perri grinned again. “I’d try to tell you what other things, but then I’d get really sleepy. Part of how I deal with insomnia sometimes is just to try harder to remember it.”

“Perri can be very susceptible to light-induced trance,” Dr Calvert commented, but made no move to take control of the appointment. She let her star pupil shine.

“I know.” Perri made a face. “My boyfriend figured that out, too. I guess I told him about this, and next thing I know, we’re in his room and he’s got these strobes flashing.”

Dr Calvert’s eyebrow went up.

“Part of what I was going to tell you,” Perri said, not looking too contrite this time.

Serena looked at her, suddenly cold even though the girl was here, and all right, and “vibrant,” as the doctor had said. A lot of the amateur svengalis out there were just boys who “only” wanted to drug or hypnotize girls into giving them free sex, and they were capable of some awful damage. Hearing them whine afterward about just wanting fun undid none of it.

“I’m not sure if the lights were hypnotizing me or just making me really dizzy. But, thing is, Genius Boy’s voice gets all strange when he’s horny.” She giggled, and neither Serena nor Dr Calvert could help themselves from giggling too.

“Anyway, he’s got me staring at the lights. But he’s trying to program me into his obedient little slutbunny, in this funky horn-dog voice that I usually don’t mind because by the time I hear it I’m usually horny, too.

“But which is really just annoying. So, I could hear what he was telling me.”

“And?” Serena and Dr Calvert spoke together.

“And, he’s an ex-boyfriend now.” Perri’s smile became wholesomely sadistic. “Said something as I was leaving, about going after nonathletic nerd girls, next time.

“Hard to tell, exactly.” She raised a leg and flexed one perfect knee. “After I gave him this in his crotch, his voice got really funky.

“I think it might have gotten back to normal when the cops started questioning him.”

Dr Calvert sighed, but she was trying hard not to laugh. “We can discuss it afterward.

“Actually, Perri, since Serena’s here, I thought it would be useful to take you through a more gradual induction. She can see how the relaxation happens, and how you respond as I take you down deeper.”

Perri’s eyes almost seemed to droop for a second, but she said, “No problemo, Doctor C. I like listening to you, too.”

Serena took a surreptitious breath. She’d thought the odd device was another piece of modernistic sculpture, and now she was relieved it wouldn’t spin and flash and do its other things while she was here. She imagined the embarrassment of waking up to find that she’d accidentally let it snare her attention and fallen into trance like a idiot.

“I realize that it may be a little odd, feel a little odd, to slow down like this, but I believe that from time to time its good to vary the ways that I relax your mind and help to you to forget the things that trouble you and distract you from your true focus.”

As she spoke, Dr Calvert had taken Perri’s hand and started leading her toward an inviting easy chair. Serena was puzzled, wondering why Dr Calvert was still persuading Perri when the girl had already agreed, but she saw that Perri’s hand was nearly limp in Dr Calvert’s, and her strong young body was moving slowly. Perri had turned to watch the psychiatrist, and her eyes really were lidded now, the enthusiasm she’d carried in with her draining out.

Dr Calvert had said “gradual induction” but Perri looked halfway hypnotized already. She wasn’t transfixed, and when the doctor urged her to sit she looked away from the woman’s eyes and down at the chair as she did, but Serena didn’t think much of it registered with the girl.

Perri sat compliantly and looked up at the doctor. It hit Serena hard to see how subdued she was, almost drugged, all that puppyish energy neutralized and lost under quiet docility now.

“Rest for a little while,” the doctor said, lowering Perri’s arm. She came over to Serena. “She’s very responsive, although she’s already more relaxed than usual. I think part of her really prefers the lighter way.

“In a sense she’s trained herself to prepare to be hypnotized in this setting, so she’s quite ripe for active suggestions.”

Serena looked into Dr Calvert’s eyes again. I can imagine enjoying your voice and your eyes putting me into a peaceful trance. Perri probably does. She held in her shiver, suddenly wondering if Dr Calvert was what Perri dreamed about, after the memory of the light machine closed her eyes for her.

She looked away at Perri herself to hide the thought, and had to hold another shiver in as she saw how helpless the girl was, all that muscular energy tranquilized and keeping her body limp and half-asleep. Maybe the way her ex-boyfriend had wanted her to be, before she’d been lucky enough to snap out of it, and touch his cock in a wholly unexpected way.

“I understand,” she said, and gasped at how quiet and submissive it sounded. But even the gasp was quiet, and Dr Calvert nodded without noticing. Maybe she thought Serena was helping by not rousing Perri.

Serena swallowed. She was almost afraid of the power that had already conquered Perri. More precisely, that had made this powerful young woman willing to relax and let it conquer her.

She was afraid of how riveting it was to see the girl conquered.

7.

“Would you like to help me, Serena?” Dr Calvert smiled a little crookedly, keeping her voice just as low. “I outsmarted myself a little by scheduling you this way. The room lighting’s more suitable for our wide-awake consultation than for putting Perri into the most receptive state.”

“What do you want me—what should I do?”

“Thank you, Serena. I’ll stay by Perri and start to relax her. If you could go around the room and dim lights as I designate them, the lightplay can help her let herself go under.”

Serena felt a warm rush of protectiveness for the girl smiling peacefully at them. “Of course,” she whispered, as though Perri were already asleep. She rose and went to the first switch Dr Calvert pointed to, waiting.

“Please adjust the dimmer for me, Serena.” Dr Calvert kept her voice low and soft, letting even her directions be part of soothing Perri while the girl waited quietly to be hypnotized. “Lower . . . gently . . . lower . . . yes . . . thank you, Serena.” Serena smiled.

“Now the lamp by the sofa, please, Serena. The rheostat . . . lower . . . lower . . . yes.” Lamp by lamp, Serena made her way through the room. Dr Calvert kept the lighting balanced around Perri as the growing shadows slowly enfolded them. Serena paused, seeing how the lighting made Dr Calvert’s beautiful face more prominent and compelling.

Perri can’t look away from her now. Serena realized she herself hadn’t for a moment, either. She felt like an acolyte dimming temple candles, and actually found herself standing still as though at a ritual, waiting for the priestess to direct her.

She chose a seat a bit farther from them. She told herself it was to keep from disturbing Perri’s almost palpable relaxation, but it was—dangerously—attractive.

Dr Calvert’s eyes were lidded as she watched Serena sit. “Yes,” she whispered, smiling as Perri responded to the word itself and nodded slowly. “I sometimes find myself getting caught up in this type of induction. It’s very seductive to succumb to the suggestions myself, and it’s mainly keeping a focus on my patient that keeps me from joining her.”

She cupped Perri’s cheek tenderly. “There now, Perri, soft lights now for a soft moment that can just go on, just let it go soft . . .”

Serena felt her pussy twitch at “soft.” Dr Calvert’s contralto made it into a delicate caress inside her head, and Perri’s eyes widened each time. Serena wondered if it was a special trigger the girl had, a way she let Dr Calvert into her consciousness. Her burning rush of liking for the girl warmed more, seeing how open she was and how able to trust in the doctor.

As Dr Calvert spoke soothingly and monotonously about softness and soft things, Serena wondered if this were something deep for Perri, something passive the girl had thrown herself into sports and extroversion to resist. Something she felt safe to explore now, under Dr Calvert’s protection, and trance she could return from, or to, freely.

Serena smiled to herself. That sounded almost like something the doctor had actually just said to Perri. Maybe she was starting to think like Dr Calv—

She was starting to drift, was what she was doing. She tried to rouse herself without interrupting Perri’s journey into trance. Part of that business about softness and exploring had been real, and she’d let it start to draw her into the same velvet trap Perri had willingly stepped into.

Well, if she managed to let Dr Calvert accidentally hypnotize her like this, maybe she would start to think like her. Think just as Dr Calvert told her to. At least until the psychiatrist realized it and eased her awake again.

She swallowed. It had been perilously easy to fall into the rhythm of Dr Calvert’s lulling, controlling voice as she carried out the lighting instructions, both of them almost acting as though hypnotized to weave that web around Perri’s mind. Now she waited for Dr Calvert to start taking Perri through the specific relaxation sequence, alert for instructions to feel her legs or face easing so she could resist them.

It wasn’t the melodramatic assault the light machine would have been if Dr Calvert had used it on Perri, but it was just as capable of soothing Serena herself into a trance.

She hung tightly on to professional pride and her need to focus on this. She didn’t want to sit with a shamefaced grin, later, while Dr Calvert told her what she’d slept through. She’d be as astonished as Perri to learn what had happened as they both slept peacefully under the doctor’s voice, open to what it told them and empty of any desire to question or disagree. She needed to focus.

Serena blinked. Damn. She had been drifting but she knew it had only been for a second or two. She needed to focus.

It had seemed difficult to hear what Dr Calvert was saying and Serena made herself listen. If she let that dazing voice become just a sound it would drone her to sleep before she could help herself. But then it got easier, and Serena could hear it, almost as though the doctor were next to her, speaking quietly and firmly as she was speaking to Perri.

Serena tried to listen as attentively as the girl did. Perri sat raptly, yielding completely to the suggestions, not resisting anything the hypnotist told her to feel or think. Watching her surrender was almost hypnotic, and—

Serena caught herself again. She needed to focus. Her eyes sought Perri’s and they were open, empty and staring. Her own eyes could go just as blank, if she dropped her guard again. She had to concentrate—Dr Calvert could care for only one hypnotized woman at a time.

Perri was certainly hypnotized. At some point her sleepy, melting relaxation had slid into something else. She sat upright now, her firm breasts moving with her smooth deep breaths. Her face was alert but blank, her eyes staring calmly into space. Her hands lay flat on her thighs.

“I need to focus,” Perri said, softly. Serena nodded. She needed to focus.

Focus was important, and at the focus her thoughts would be clear. She nodded and kept staring at beautiful hypnotized Perri, so soothed and so soothing, strong and helpless. Perri was becoming her hypnotist, but Perri was totally safe, because Perri was too deeply hypnotized to tell her to do anything.

Serena realized gently that she couldn’t look away from Perri, and didn’t really mind because it felt wonderful to keep looking at the girl and how open, and relaxed, and utterly suggestible she was. What was in her mind was what the hypnotist had been telling Perri to think. Now Serena was thinking it, too.

How relaxing.

“Have you become hypnotized, Serena?”

Serena vaguely remembered being concerned about that happening, but the worry meant nothing now. Dr Calvert’s responses didn’t concern her. Dr Calvert was the hypnotist and Serena must respond.

“Yes, Doctor. I’ve become hypnotized.”

A slight breeze of panic blew through Serena’s soul. She was as easy to control now as this oft-entranced girl.

“How do you feel about being hypnotized by me, Serena?”

The panic passed almost pleasurably. This was a safe risk. Dr Calvert had just taught her to submit without fear or even guilt.

Dr Calvert had made her like it.

“I feel safe and relaxed, Doctor.” She smiled, letting the Doctor see it, although she still had no will to look at anything but Perri.

She shivered, but enjoyed the shiver. Then, she relaxed. She hadn’t given up her will. She just had no desire whatever to use it now.

Dr Calvert would tell her what she must do.

God, Perri looked so erotic, sitting there emptily. She looked as though Dr Calvert could make her do anything she was told. Serena’s pussy clenched as she imagined the low, commanding voice instructing Perri to return to her ex-boyfriend with the light machine and explain how he could use it to enslave her forever. Perri looked completely obedient, as if obeying commands from her hypnotist was her only purpose in life, more than success or dignity or even survival.

It was so horrible.

God. Her panties were soaking. Perri would just obey.

Serena thought of how Perri would sound, if Dr Calvert were to ask her how she felt to be hypnotized.

Maybe Perri would call her “Mistress.”

If Serena had the will to do anything but sit quietly and respond, she wondered how saying Mistress would feel. How it would—taste.

I feel safe and relaxed, Mistress.

Ohhh. God.

I must obey you, Mistress.

There was a faint thread of something, as she looked at Perri. The young woman had been so sassy when she’d come in, before hypnosis and that voice had stunned her into this lovely automaton. So free.

Oh, Perri. No.

This was safe, she remembered. Dr Calvert was Perri’s therapist, who’d earned her trust. Who’d protected her from other hypnotic predators.

The thread thickened. It felt . . . wrong to see Perri so helpless and open. Wrong to sit quietly and do nothing while Perri had become the other woman’s passive thrall, had been charmed into it.

Serena felt a long, low, almost orgasmic wave of pleasure. She knew how it felt to be charmed now. She fought it and told herself a voluptuous, hypnotized girl wasn’t something to get wet over but someone to be freed, awakened, rescued.

She didn’t move. She’d sat and stayed docile as she watched Perri enthralled because she was hypnotized, too, just waiting her turn. Her hypnotist hadn’t told her to move.

She could, she knew. She hadn’t given up her will. She’d just surrendered the ability to call on it.

Serena relaxed and watched Perri fall deeper under the hypnotist’s control.

She couldn’t hear what Dr Calvert was murmuring to Perri, but she saw the girl’s blissful, sleepy-eyed agreement with every word of it.

She couldn’t keep herself from moaning softly.

“Serena?”

The voice was directed at her now. She stared at glassy-eyed Perri and saw herself.

“Yes, Doctor.” She heard herself, tame and submissive. Someone might like to keep her by them, constantly entranced, just to hear the obedience fluttering through that voice. Her voice.

“Serena, I’d like to see how cooperative you’re feeling now. All right?”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“Serena, you know you can trust me completely.” She nodded, trembling with how true it was, and kept staring at the other woman who trusted their hypnotist completely.

“And I know, Serena, that right now you feel a very deep need to please me. A need to obey me.”

“To obey you.” Serena moved in the chair. It was like being in bed. Needing to please. Being stroked.

“Yes, Serena.” There was only breathing now. Serena had never been with another woman but it was easy to dream of being in bed with this beautiful, enthralling hypnotist. Hearing that breath across the pillow. Sliding willingly down the warm, silken body to lick and please and . . .

“I think you want to tell me who raised this question, Serena.”

Serena obediently thought of Eve, angry and frightened in the bar mirror at Endgames, and saw Eve’s face soften as she, too, let herself be hypnotized out of her cares.

“Tell me who thought they saw mind control.”

Serena closed her eyes on the image of hypnotized Perri and saw only Eve. Eve trusted her. She wanted so badly to please her hypnotist but she made herself remember Eve’s eyes, her desperation. Her horror at seeing her boss and friend sitting as obediently entranced as Perri was.

Give up her source.

“Noooo . . .”

The pain of disobeying scared her, but what scared her more was what she’d say when it stopped.